


Nothing Without Pretend

by lovecatcadillac



Category: Bomb Girls
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-29 01:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovecatcadillac/pseuds/lovecatcadillac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She took her time growing up, but Kate is ready for her childhood to be a bad dream she once had. Kate’s POV during <i>Roses Red.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Trigger warning for abuse.
> 
> Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Global/Shaw Media.
> 
> Notes: Title is from Civilian by Wye Oak.

Mrs Groot’s rooming house is a hive of activity, as it is every weekday morning. The women charge from bedrooms to bathroom to common room, grumbling, laughing, calling to each other. To Kate, nowhere has ever felt more like home. Yet she still feels somewhat off-kilter, like a ghost seeing the world move on without her, watching Betty and the other Blue Shift girls go off to work while she stays behind. The way people (Father) talk about how completely unnatural it is for women to have jobs, Kate always thought that she would be ecstatic to give up her job, no matter how she enjoyed it. Yet she’s felt so out of sorts the past few months, not working. Another thing Father was wrong about...

“I gotta be on my way in a few minutes,” Betty says from the doorway, checking her purse for her identity card. She slows at the sight of Kate. “Everything all right?”

Kate is bent double, rifling through the contents of her bag. “I’m running out of clean clothes,” says Kate, avoiding Betty’s eyes. It sounds less awkward than saying she ran out yesterday. “I don’t want to be a bother, but could I – borrow some laundry soap?”

“You don’t wanna be doing laundry on a day like this. Your clothes’ll take all day to dry.” Betty gestures at her wardrobe. “You’re welcome to borrow whatever you like from me, until we go and grab your things.”

Though Betty was – _is_ Kate’s best friend,  they’ve never really gotten as far as borrowing each other’s clothes. They dress so differently, for starters. Kate always liked Betty’s pants and boots, but she couldn’t have imagined wearing that sort of thing herself. She imagined Betty felt the same way about her own flowered dresses and cardigans.

Theirs was never really a friendship founded on trading outfits and makeup tips. Kate’s had so few female friends in her life that last night, on hers and Betty’s double-date with Ivan and Buster, was the first time Kate’s ever borrowed someone else’s dress. Kate was in the same position she is now, rummaging shamefacedly in her bag as though hoping she would uncover a decent outfit if only she shifted her things one more time. When she was just about to give up, Betty breezed by and dropped something carelessly onto the bed beside Kate.

It was a dress, a deep green one with little sprigs of golden yellow all over it. Betty’s best dress, the one she wore when she was a little nervous and wanted to impress. There was something cheering about seeing it again, about remembering that first night at Sandy Shores, when they danced for the first time and really became friends.

Kate actually smiled. It was the barest lip-twitch of a smile, but it almost hurt to do, because it had been so very long since she had had a reason to be happy. That little smile, at seeing Betty’s green dress and knowing those four months last year hadn’t been a dream, felt like it cracked the mask Kate had been wearing right up the middle. She had her own face again, for better or worse.

Then, something occurred to her. “Betty, it’s beautiful … but I can’t wear it.” The gravity of the situation suddenly swamped her, and Kate wished like anything for the mask to come back. She struggled against the urge to blurt out, _“I can’t wear any of your dresses. I can’t go after all.”_

Frowning, Betty turned from where she stood at the mirror. “Why not?”

_Because Father left bruises,_ Kate thought, but she  didn’t say it aloud. She never used to have to say it aloud to Mother. She suddenly had the most miserable desire to be really young, three or four, and climbing into her mother’s lap for comfort. _Mother should be here, helping me get ready for my first proper date. What if she’s dead, what if she’s dead, what if she’s dead..._

After a moment, Betty hauled open a bureau drawer and retrieved a green scarf. She held it out to Kate. “Sorry about the colour. I know it doesn’t go exactly ... I can always run and see if anyone’s got something that goes better. Jeannie has a scarf for every day of the year. I think she shoplifts them.”

Kate realised that her hands were lingering at her own throat. Slowly, Kate took the scarf and tied it around her neck, hiding the worst of the bruises. Betty was – is – always doing lovely little things like that for Kate. Nobody, apart from Mother, ever cared for Kate like Betty does. It’s why Kate loves to be around her so much, why she feels-

_Thank Heaven it’s cold,_ Kate thinks, pulling herself firmly back into the present. Everybody is wearing scarves out in the street, so she won’t stick out. She can hide the bruises every day, until they fade. She smiles wanly at Betty and says, “Have a nice day at work.”

“When shift is over, we’ll go to your caravan and get you packed properly. Then … then you can move back in.” Betty looks so hopeful and it makes Kate scared and happy and guilty, all at once. She doesn’t feel like she can speak. She just nods, which makes Betty’s own smile turn into a grin. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

The third floor grows very quiet, after everyone leaves for work. When Kate lets out the breath she’s been holding, it sounds almost comically loud. She blushes and, trying to look decisive (Kate usually tries to behave like she’s being watched, it’s the safest thing), opens the wardrobe to find something to wear.

The wardrobe is filled with skirts, blouses and dresses. Kate knows she shouldn’t be surprised. Last night, when Kate complimented Betty’s outfit, Betty said something vague about Vera teaching her a bit about dressmaking, about Gladys buying her some material as an unbirthday gift (Betty made a face when she said that – she wasn’t raised to accept _unbirthday gifts_ from anybody, even a friend). _They should fit me all right,_ thinks Kate, but something makes her move them aside.

Here they are, the clothes Betty used to wear before, bunched together at the back of the wardrobe. Kate recognises them all. She feels ridiculously glad that they’re still here, that Betty didn’t throw them away. She spies a familiar pattern and before she knows it, she’s pulling out one of Betty’s old shirts. Not to wear it, or anything. These clothes aren’t for Kate to wear. She just wants to hold it for minute, hold it in her hands.

Kate always used to love seeing this shirt on Betty; the colours, the pretty pattern of little people waiting to get into boats in Venice. It was the most unusual article of clothing Kate had ever seen, yet it looked so tidy, so presentable, so capable, not gaudy or ostentatious at all.

She thinks, _Why couldn’t I wear it? Betty’s a woman. That makes this a woman’s shirt. It’ll look all right. And even if it doesn’t, there’s no reason I couldn’t try it on. Betty’s hardly going to shout at me for trying on a couple of different things before I decide on an outfit for the day._

So Kate tries it. As usual, she refrains from looking at herself while she’s in her underwear, or even halfway into the shirt. She always feels dirty, looking at her own body when she’s not dressed. It’s not hard to keep her gaze away from the mirror, though. There is something rather soothing and orderly about doing up all those little buttons, of the final effect of each one neatly pushed through its corresponding buttonhole. No wonder Betty used to like wearing this shirt so much.

(There is a part of Kate, deep, deep inside, that wonders how it would be to undo each button again, on herself, or another person - but she can’t go down that road now.)

She glances hesitantly up at the mirror over the sink. Usually, she’d be uncomfortably conscious of the fact that her legs are bare, despite the mirror only showing her from the waist up. Kate doesn’t feel half-dressed, wearing this shirt. It looks _good,_ almost as good with Kate’s red hair and blue eyes as it does with Betty’s very different colouring.

_Now I just need a skirt that’ll match,_ Kate thinks, but her hands find some heavier material and before she knows it, she’s holding a pair of Betty’s trousers up against herself. She could try them on. She _could._

_You can’t,_ says a scandalised voice in her head. _You can’t wear those in the street!_

Kate can. It’s not like it was before the war, plenty of women wear trousers now. And anyway, who said anything about wearing them in the street? She’s just trying them out, for Pete’s sake. It’s like playing dress-up. The way Gladys tells it, she spent half her childhood in dress-up clothes, used to rope her older brother or Carol into playing various attendants and handmaidens. It was yet another thing Kate missed out on. Well, she didn’t have anyone to play with, did she? Her brothers are six and twelve years younger, so she was more like a second mother to them than a playmate. There wasn’t really much in the way of dressing-up costumes to be had. Kate only ever got new clothes once she had grown out of the old ones. Mother’s clothes were like larger, darker versions of Kate’s own, not terribly inspiring. Father wouldn’t have ever let Mother wear anything bright or pretty. He didn’t like it when women showed their vanity. He didn’t like it when Kate gave herself over to flights of fancy, either. Father’s clothes were completely out of the question, as far as dressing up went. He would have bellowed at her for so much as trying on his hat...

Pulling the trousers up her thighs, Kate wants it to feel like she’s thumbing her nose at him, like he can’t scare her or tell her what to do any more. (How ridiculous, to do something so silly as thumbing her nose at someone who wouldn’t hesitate to break one of her ribs, snap her wrist, get out his belt and order her to strip to the waist … he barely ever hurt Kate where it would show. The few times Father ever bruised her face, Kate didn’t leave the caravan until the swelling had gone down. Meek little church mouse, always doing what she was told. _Coward,_ she thinks.)

Kate has never worn trousers before. She wore coveralls at work, but it felt different, somehow. Different to this.

There is a reason why Betty has banished these things to the back of her wardrobe, why she doesn’t wear them any more. She’s normal now.

_You can’t,_ says the voice in Kate’s head, trying to remain calm and matter-of-fact in the face of what Kate is seriously considering, _go to the caravan. Not today, not alone, and certainly not dressed like that._

Kate chews her lip. She knows in her heart that it’s all true. She’s not brave enough, or reckless enough or – whatever it is that Betty _is_ (or was), enough, to leave the rooming house in this outfit. Maybe Kate  doesn’t even have it in her to return to the caravan, the one room where she spent almost all her twenty-four years of childhood, to get the money that she earned with her own two hands, the dresses she sat up at nights sewing. She is small and she is weak. She can’t go deluding herself. She’s not remotely like Betty, no matter what she wears.

Just as she goes to untuck Betty’s shirt, Kate hears a long, loud creak outside on the landing. She stops dead and listens to the silence.

_Is the door locked?_ she thinks frantically, not daring to move in case she makes a noise. She begins taking stock of her situation in a sickeningly familiar way. _It is locked? Did you check it? Are you sure?_

Oh, how could she have thought the fall might kill him? He is the very wrath of God. Nothing could stop him from coming for her. He’ll chase her to the ends of the earth, chase her until she’s about to draw her last breath, just so he can have the pleasure of choking the life out of her himself...

“Go away,” she chokes out. She means to shout it, but it comes out as a terrified whisper.

“Kate?” calls a voice from outside.

It’s not Father. It’s a woman, one of the other rooming house residents. Kate still can’t seem to make herself speak.

“Kate, I know you’re in there,” comes a hoarse, irritable voice.

She screws her eyes shut, making hot, shameful tears slide down her cheeks. “Yes?”

“It’s Dolores. You seen my _Romance Digest_? Phyllis made off with it last night, and I checked her room, but it’s not there.” Dolores coughs. “I’ll be damned if I’m stayin’ in bed all day without a magazine.”

“I-I haven’t seen it,” stammers Kate. “Try the common room.”

“That’s what everyone keeps tellin’ me,” grumbles Dolores. Kate hears her carpet slippers shuffling away.

Kate wants to scream at herself. She longs to sink to the floor, hold her head in her hands and moan. She wishes she could tear it out of herself, this part of her that she hates, the Marion part of her – beat it, crush it, make it so it can never taunt her again. Part of her wants to sit on Betty’s bed and stare at the door for hour after hour, wait for Betty to return so she can hold Kate’s hand all the way to the caravan, or even go for her.

Kate doesn’t do any of those things. She meets her own eyes in the mirror and very pointedly wipes away her tears. She does not change into a blouse and skirt. Over Betty’s shirt and trousers, Kate pulls on her own gloves, her green beret, her brown trench coat. Little touches of Kate, here and there, to remind her who she is. Kate Andrews now, Kate Andrews forever.

She has to go to the caravan. She has to go today, alone and, yes, dressed like this. She has to do all the things that Marion never, ever could. She took her time growing up, but Kate is ready for her childhood to be a bad dream she once had. It’s time to lay Marion Rowley to rest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Trigger warning for abuse and internalised homophobia (of the religious sort). Please let me know if I should add any more.
> 
> Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Global/Shaw Media.
> 
> Notes: This chapter includes Kate's point of view of the change room scene. I hope I managed to do it justice.

Kate left the police station almost two hours ago. She is still berating herself. _Why couldn't you cry?_ It's all Sergeant Brody expected of her. It's what people – women – are _supposed_ to do when their fathers die. Every moment that she didn't break down just made her look worse. If only Kate could have forced out a tear, made her voice shake the slightest bit, she would have been above suspicion, above any sort of reproach.

_Father never liked me to cry when he was alive. This is what he would have wanted,_ she thinks blackly. This sort of wilful denial is the closest she gets to sarcasm. The fact is, Kate's not holding back tears out of respect for him. What little respect, or love, or any sort of kind feeling she had for Father is long gone. Maybe it was never really there. Maybe it was all just fear, and now that she has no reason to fear him any more, there's nothing left of him inside her heart.

Her father is dead, and her mother and brothers may as well be dead, for all Kate knows about where they might be. She's alone in the world, and still she cannot cry. There is something so very wrong with her, but she can't think about that right now. She needs to get away.

Kate has a tiny advantage. Sergeant Brody thinks her name is still Marion Rowley, and that she lives in that dank little caravan. She has to get rid of Marion _and_ Kate and become someone else as quickly as she can. Everyone in Toronto knows her as Kate Andrews. If anyone finds out that Marion Rowley and Kate Andrews are one and the same, it will be disastrous. It sounds like something out of a film or a magazine story: a wayward girl, running away from her pious, long-suffering pastor father, finds herself in the big city and gets swept up in a giddy whirl of booze and jazz and forbidden, deviant passions. The father finds her (due to the pornographic photos she had taken) and brings her home (or as close to home as you can get, when you arrive there to discover nearly your entire family has disappeared). He winds up dead in an alley. She runs, and reports the death to no-one. What happened in between, no-one will particularly care, as long as justice is done.

There is nothing for Kate but to leave town. She'll be all right. Jobs aren't hard to come by nowadays, and she knows where to get false papers. She has to leave now, before Sergeant Brody runs into any of the dozens of people who know Kate as _Kate,_ and that tiny, blessed advantage is gone.

Yet Kate is not waiting anxiously on a train platform, trying to hide her face from passersby. She's not even at the rooming house, frantically gathering the few belongings she left in Betty's bedroom. Kate is in the change room at Vic Mu, waiting for Betty to come in and see her. She's been waiting half an hour. She chants clichés in her head - _time is of the essence, every second is precious_ – but she knows she will wait all day if she has to.

Kate has always had this habit of thinking of herself as many people, maybe because she's needed to be so many people to get by. Right now is no exception. She sees herself as she was over those four months last year, dozens of ghost Kates making their way around the room, missing each other by inches, blind to the real Kate. She sees herself on her first day, aghast at the realisation that the showers were communal, so ashamed of her breasts and her legs and especially her scars. Kate sees herself growing in confidence, rolling up stockings, applying lipstick and brushing out her hair alongside Gladys. She sees herself on her last day, the day of the Pearl Harbor attacks, rising to leave with Betty after Betty offered her arm and said, “Let's go.” So gallant. Kate had no idea women could be like that to other women. That's the problem, it seems. She was far too innocent. She will never be innocent again.

She hears a clatter of work boots. Betty is running to meet her, but slows to a brisk walk as she enters the change room. “Kate?”

_This is it,_ thinks Kate. “I'm here,” she says, sitting very still on one of the benches.

“Have you been waiting long?” asks Betty, attempting normalcy. “They didn't tell me you were here for ages – and then there was no-one to sub in. They're lucky I didn't drop one of the shells, I wanted to get off the floor so bad.”

_I don't want to let you go,_ something raw inside Kate screams. _I let you go already. Not again, not again..._

Kate is the one who has to go. It's the only way.

“What's wrong?” Betty sits down beside her.

Kate clears her throat. “I went to the caravan.”

Betty's brows knit. “By yourself?”

“Yes.” Kate resists the urge to apologise. “It's something I needed to do. I met a police officer there. He said they'd found a body. I went to view it. You were right. He's dead, Betty.”

Betty's face works for a moment or two before she finally asks, “Are you all right?”

Kate winces inwardly. Betty thinks Kate has come to the factory because she's _upset._

“I'm fine,” says Kate, too quickly. If Betty didn't know before how awful Kate is, how little she feels, then she certainly knows now. But this is not about Kate any more. She goes on, “They're looking for a blonde woman. I tried to put them off the scent, but I don't know how well I did.”

Betty cracks a shaky smile. “I guess this means I'm going brunette.”

“Don't joke about this.”

Betty gives a short, desperate laugh. “You're safe, and he can't hurt you any more. Nothing else matters.”

“Of course it matters,” says Kate, in a voice which is not quite her own. “They're looking for you.”

They sit in silence for a moment before Betty asks, “Why are you here, Kate?”

Kate makes herself look at Betty. “I wanted us to have a proper goodbye.”

“What do you mean, goodbye?”

“With me here, you're too much at risk with the police.”

“I don't care if they're looking for me,” Betty says, her voice cracking. “This is where you belong. You go by another name, they'll never find you.”

“I can't take that chance. I'm sorry.”

Betty looks down at her lap. “Am I ever gonna see you again?” Before Kate can reply, Betty says, “No. Of course not.” Betty shuts her eyes and says softly, “God, I'm so _stupid._ None of this ever would've happened if I hadn't –”

Oh, how Kate longs to take Betty in her arms. It's all changed, now. She can't so much as touch her hand, not when they're all alone like this. “Betty, it's all right. It's not your fault, it's mine. You did the best you could for me. I'm so grateful to you.”

“I don't want you to be grateful,” Betty bursts out. Kate flinches. Raised voices always make her wince. Betty knows that all too well. Kate watches Betty struggling to keep her composure. “I just want you to be here. I kept tellin' myself, while you were away, that if it was a choice between you being safe and you being here, I'd always pick you being safe. I was always thinking things like that, trying to be all noble. I thought I'd go to pieces when you left, knowing what – knowing why you went. I decided that I'd make up for what I did by doing right by you, every day, being the kind of girl you could be proud of. But I'm not noble. I wanted you to be safe, but I wanted you to come home, too.”

Kate's heart freezes in mid-beat. She wanted to come home to Betty every minute. It didn't make any sense. How could a rented room and a best friend feel so much more like home than the caravan she'd grown up in, the sermons she's been listening to since before she could speak, much less sing?

No good person has ever felt the way she does about her best friend. Kate won't let herself think of Naomi and Ruth in the Bible. It would be wrong, to try and paint them as perverted just to make herself feel better. Ruth and Naomi never even thought of kissing each other.

“It's not safe,” says Kate. “It never will be. And I couldn't live with myself if you got caught up in all this.”

It all feels so ridiculously paltry. Kate yearns to say more. She wants to say, _I can't drag you down with me_ _, I love you too much_. A wicked, dark part of her wants to say, _You could come with me. Walk out of the factory with me, right this minute. Leave your friends, your job, your boyfriend. Come with me, be with me. I don't want to leave you behind._

Betty would say yes, if Kate asked her. That's the most frightening thing of all. If either of them gives in, even a little, there's no telling where they could end up.

Kate gets to her feet. “You've got a life here, not me.” She tries her best to sound optimistic as she points out, “You found a boy!”

“He's nothing but a fling,” Betty says exasperatedly.

_Don't talk about him that way,_ Kate shouts silently. _For God's sakes, hold onto him. He can make you happy. He can give you the life you deserve. All I do is ruin everything. Even if I were like other girls, boyfriends always trump best friends. It's the way things are. How could you possibly want me when you've got him?_

Kate wanted to ask as few questions as possible, because she knows that she'll be thinking about Betty and everything they missed out on for the rest of her life. She's let it go too long already. Kate doesn't need anything else to agonise over. But she needs to know.

“You deserve to be happy. Why do you want me messing up your life?”

_It can't be because she loves me,_ she thinks. _I couldn't ever love someone like me. And besides, we're both women. We can't love each other. It's impossible._

_(If she tells me she loves me, I'll say it back, just once. Then I promise I'll never hurt her again. It's not so bad, just to say it once, if it's the last time ever. We could have that much.)_

Betty looks just the way Kate feels: like she's struggling to hold back something that could level the factory if she ever let it out. Kate's heart is in her throat. Betty feels the same, Kate knows she does. So much of the love Kate's felt up to now was best expressed without words: the way Mother used to kiss her goodnight even after Kate was quite grown up, the protectiveness she felt watching her brothers sleep, the proud cosy feeling she got striding along arm in arm with Gladys … the feeling of being _home,_ even when she was living a lie, as long as she was with Betty. Why couldn't it have stayed that way? It only goes to show, saying too much of how you feel just ruins everything.

Kate has never wanted anyone to speak out loud more than she does right now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Trigger warning for abuse and internalised homophobia (of the religious sort). Please let me know if I should add any more.
> 
> Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Global/Shaw Media.

Kate squints up the dingy staircase, trying not to breathe in too deeply through her nose. _Maybe he’s not in,_ she thinks, half-worried, half-hopeful. _Maybe he’s moved on._ She knows enough of the world, now, to be aware that what Chet Richings does for a living is not only a sin, but extremely illegal. She could see a light in the window from the street, though. If Kate listens hard enough, she can just make out a record playing overhead. He’s here, all right. _So now what are you going to do?_

Steeling herself, Kate begins to make her way up the steps. Everything about this place seems designed to make a girl uneasy. The stairs are very steep, creaking ominously under her feet, and there’s no railing to hang onto. _Once you’ve braved the stairs, taking off your clothes feels like nothing,_ Kate thinks with the kind of flippancy that only comes from knowing – swearing to herself, night after night, to try and stave off the shame and the fear – that nobody is ever ordering her to strip again. Not to mark her sins into her back, not to take her photograph, not for anything. She’s staying buttoned up to her chin for the rest of her days.

When they came here in late September, Betty walked ahead of Kate. Betty came up these stairs the way she goes everywhere: with long strides and decisive footfalls, like she was utterly prepared to run the show.

Before Betty went to knock at the door, Kate made a flimsy grab for her sleeve. Betty shot her a quizzical look. “What will your friend want me to do?” Kate asked, feeling sick and dirty for even acknowledging the possibility of _doing things_ with a man. Kate went on (with her voice shaking, and betraying her), “It’s just – I’d rather know, is all.”

“He’s gonna want to take your photograph,” Betty said carefully.

Kate felt weak from relief. “That’s all?”

“Well.” Kate understood, afterward, why Betty hesitated in her reply. “Yeah. Girls like you, when they want papers, Chet asks to take their picture.”

“He’s not gonna hurt me?”

“’Course not,” said Betty, a little defensively. Perhaps she was already having doubts about Kate’s ability to get through a photoshoot with Chet Richings. Or more likely she felt guilty, that this was the only kind of help she could offer. “Do you think I’d take you to anybody who was gonna lay a finger on you?”

“No,” Kate said. She found, to her very great surprise, that she wasn’t just saying it to make Betty happy. Kate trusted her.

Now, Kate tries to trust herself. She steps through the doorway, eyes adjusting to the strange light, and starts to call out before she spies Chet, bent over a table covered with papers. Kate’s voice is quiet but perfectly even as she says, “Chet.”

He turns, seeking her out in the dark doorway, and actually gives a start at the sight of her. “Andrews?”

Much as she still dislikes him, there is something heartening about Chet calling her by the surname Mother gave her. It reminds her of the way people at Tangiers sometimes used to call Betty “McRae.” Standing where Betty stood months ago, wearing Betty’s clothes, Kate feels how she imagines Betty must feel all the time: strong and capable, not to be trifled with. Or she can pretend she feels it, at least.

Chet regards her. “I met your old man a couple of months back.” When Kate says nothing, Chet feels the need to elaborate. “He came in here, all fire and brimstone... It was something to see, let me tell you.” He smiles sardonically. “Way he was talking, I expected to hear about some fisherman pullin’ your carcass out of a river.”

_And yet, you gave him my address,_ Kate thinks. What she says aloud is, “I’ve left him. But he’ll be looking for me, so I need to go away for awhile. To disappear.”

“And I thought you were here for the pleasure of ol’ Chet’s company. Still. We’re going to be taking a few more photos?”

“Not today, Chet,” she says. “I have money this time.”

Chet cracks his knuckles unpleasantly. “You’ll be needing a birth certificate, transit papers-”

“And security clearance,” says Kate. She’s learned her lesson from last time. You can’t skimp on starting a new life.

“Well, well. Someone’s splashing out,” Chet says with a smirk. “We’ll need one photo, though, for your ID. You know the drill. Sit yourself down over there.”

Kate sits down on the same stool she sat on to take her pin-up photos. She tries not to look too anxious as she adjusts her scarf. Without a mirror, it’s hard to tell whether it covers the bruises, but she’s not about to ask Chet to check for her. She doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. All she can do is hope the marks don’t show up in the photo.

“How’s our mutual friend?” Chet asks, adjusting the light. “I haven’t seen her around lately.”

“She’s very busy,” says Kate, taking a vicious pleasure out of adding, “I’m sure it’s nothing personal. She’s seeing somebody, is the thing.”

“I always took our mutual friend for the bachelor type.”

“Well, she’s not,” Kate says hotly, before continuing, in a quieter voice, “They’re a lovely couple.”

The last time Kate sat here, she was more exposed than she had ever been in her life.  _ In more ways than one, _ she thinks ruefully. Because, yes, it was terrifying to have her picture taken wearing so little, but it was more than that. She knew she needed to show off her body to its best advantage, because that was the only way she was getting that all-important security report. Yet, at the same time, Kate was petrified of accidentally enjoying it. For years, Father told Kate that she was a harlot at her very core, delighting in getting men to sin with her in their hearts. She was so scared of proving him right.

Father always, always exploited her fears as a sign that she should bend to his will. If ever Kate was afraid of something, that meant it was probably a bad idea, a bad thing to do, if not an outright sin. Betty, on the other hand … she used to help Kate, when Kate was scared. If Kate was scared of something, around Betty, that just meant it was most likely new and unfamiliar, not necessarily bad. When they walked into Tangiers together that first time, and Kate was overwhelmed by the noise and the crowd – not even properly frightened, just overwhelmed – Betty held her hand and asked her if she was all right. That night ended up being the most fun Kate ever had.

Kate suddenly has such a pang of misery, because she knows that her whole life was leading her up to meeting Betty, the best friend she’s ever had, the finest person she’s ever known. They didn’t have nearly long enough together.

“Ain’t you gonna give me a smile, dollface?” Chet asks.

“I don’t feel like it right now,” murmurs Kate.

He snorts softly. “I liked you better when you wore dresses,” he says, taking the picture.

Kate gets down from the stool. She knows she ought to just pay with an absolute minimum of chit-chat, but she can’t hold in her resentment any more. “You,” she says slowly, “might have told my father I didn’t leave an address with you.” The more she thinks about it, the angrier she gets. Father wouldn’t have bothered with playing the sainted father worrying for his precious daughter’s safety, not around someone like Chet Richings. He would have made perfectly clear what he planned to do to Kate once he found her.

“Be grateful I only gave your address to your next of kin. I’ve had more than a few fellas ask after the lovely Miss Kate Andrews. Not the kind of guys you want knocking on your door. Where’s my thanks for keeping them away?”

“I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not gonna be Kate Andrews any more.” Kate shoulders her bag. “I need those papers by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. I’m willing to pay extra, if that’s what it takes. But I can’t afford to hang around in Toronto any longer than that.”

“Don’t try and put the wind up me. You’re not gonna leave town without those papers,” he says drily. “Just check into a hotel somewhere and lie low. If you run into your dear old dad again, you tell him I didn’t have the chance to get up to anything fun with you. Someone else beat me to it by the time I first met you.”

Kate stiffens. “What did you say?”

“Somebody else. _You_ know.” Chet smirks. “Our mutual friend.”

“That’s a _lie._ And if that’s what you told my father, then-” _Then no wonder he seemed to know all about it, when I found him after Tangiers._ Father didn’t even seem surprised, when Kate told him about the kiss – just disappointed, like he’d suspected all along but had retained the naïve hope that his daughter might actually be strong enough to stay on the right path. He was _gentle_ with her. She couldn’t ever remember him being that way, not even before … before Kate started noticing women – their clothes, their laughter, the way they walked in their high heels, the way they held onto their beaus – and wishing she could be like them. It was only after Kate left with him that he turned nasty. Without Mother or the boys to act as buffers, it was just Kate and Father, alone in their private little hell. It got so that the only thing it was safe for Kate to say or even think was that she was wicked and sinful and didn’t deserve forgiveness, let alone love.

Kate thought Father had just  _known,_ that he could see everything she got up to, everything she thought, everything she felt. Of course, he hadn’t corrected her. Why should he have? Giving the impression that he was somehow omniscient had always been such a good way of getting Kate to do as he wanted.

Chet scoffs at the look on Kate’s face. “I didn’t tell him nothin’ about who you were seeing. I only said it wasn’t me.”

“I’m sure that came as a complete shock,” snaps Kate, turning on her heel and heading for the stairs. “Goodbye, Chet.”

“Doll, don’t get all snippy with me. Talk nice, now. Don’t you mean, ’Goodnight, Chet’?” Kate doesn’t reply, and Chet calls mockingly after her, “Don’t you mean ’goodnight?’”

“ _Goodbye,_ ” says Kate, only it’s really like shouting. She rushes down the stairs without so much as brushing her fingertips along the peeling wallpaper to steady herself.

Snow falls on Kate’s shoulders, catches in her hair, as she walks the streets and tries to work out her next move. She’s not going back to Chet. Not even for her papers. That might be prideful or just plain stupid of her, but it’s Kate’s choice to make. Just one of lots and lots of choices she faces, now that she’s all alone in the world. Without new papers, she’ll have to leave Toronto as Kate Andrews. Kate will have to wait until she arrives somewhere different, to become someone else.

Kate tries, for the first time, to really picture it. A new city. A new name to learn to answer to. A new room in some other boarding house. A different job, perhaps making guns or planes or soldiers’ uniforms. Another best friend? Will they spend work side by side at some other factory? Will they sit on each other’s beds in the evenings, laughing at everything and nothing? Will Kate glow at the very thought of her?

Or will she keep her distance from every woman she sees? Will she shut herself in her new room, night after night, ignore her neighbours’ smiles and well-meaning questions, turn down their invitations to go out to the movies, insist she hasn’t any laundry soap or tea leaves to lend? Will she go through life trying to keep everyone away, now that she knows how dangerous it is to get close?

… Kate doesn’t want a new life, she wants the life she already has. But she can’t have it any more, for so many reasons. Even if she manages to return to her life as Kate Andrews, even if she keeps Mother’s locket hidden in her room so no-one will have reason to ask why the name Marion is hanging around her neck, even if she and Betty both keep far away from Sergeant Brody’s beat in the bad part of town … it won’t be the life she had. She knows, now, that a person can’t walk back into their own past and expect it to be just the same. The night after the Pearl Harbor bombings, when Kate left the rooming house with with her father, she thought she would be stepping seamlessly back into her old life as Marion. She found out within an hour of leaving that Marion Rowley’s life doesn’t exist any more. She held on, saying what Father wanted to her to say, thinking what he wanted her to think, biding her time, waiting for the moment when he would slip up and give her some clue as to the whereabouts of Mother and the boys. She waited what felt like a million years. It felt like a sick joke to realise it was barely two months.

Marion Rowley’s life is done. Perhaps Kate Andrews’ life is as well. Kate can’t be innocent and hopeful any more. She can’t dream of a day when she might be able to find her family, to discover Father a frail, benevolent invalid, nodding sleepily in the corner; the boys grown into good men who would sooner die than hit a woman, and Mother whole and healthy, arms open to hold Kate close and never send her away again. The old Kate was sweet, innocent, trusting. The new Kate isn’t any of those things.

Even if Kate can (pretend) somehow be _Kate_ again,  she would be putting Betty in danger. Betty would insist she wasn’t doing wrong by staying around. Noble and giving and self-sacrificing - that’s Betty, through and through. Kate knows better.

It would be selfish, to try and pick things up where she left off. Betty has Ivan now. He’s just the sort of boyfriend Betty needs. Betty doesn’t need some boorish idiot who just wants her to sit quietly and look pretty. She ought to be with someone who admires her for who she is. Betty needs the best, deserves the very best, and that’s why she got confused and kissed Kate. Not because Kate is the best, or anything, but because there are so few good men around nowadays that she thought she would have to settle for Kate.

But now Betty has found the man for her. Betty will keep dating Ivan for a year or so, and then they’ll get married. They’ll buy the house Betty’s been dreaming of since she was a girl. Betty will be Mrs Buchinsky, and she’ll be happy. There’s no room for Kate in that picture. Kate shouldn’t _want_ there to be. Ivan has changed Betty. He’s fixed her. He’s saved her. Kate should just – just let them alone, let them be together.

( _I wouldn’t change a thing about Betty. Not a single thing,_ says a tiny, terrible part of Kate.)

But maybe if Betty has Ivan, that makes it safer. _I’m not going to come between them. I wouldn’t ever. I want Betty to be happy. I want us both to be happy..._

That thought startles Kate. When Mother insisted that Kate had to leave and make it on her own, Kate never really thought about being happy. She was curious about trying all the things that had always been forbidden to her, but it never really occurred to her that she could be honestly, truly happy in herself, until – until she saw Betty. Before Betty became her friend, Kate didn’t know what it was to feel pure, unfettered joy, to have purpose and pride.

All her life, Kate knew what it was to want to be safe, to wish she was good, to wonder about everything she was missing … but never knew that she could want happiness for its own sake. Betty made her realise.

_I love her. I_ love _her._ Kate can’t help but laugh a little, at the sheer absurdity of it: that she could love anything at all even after those endless two months of Father poisoning everything fine inside her. She felt like she would curl up and die with how awful Father made her feel. Yet her love for Betty endured. How could that be sick, how could it be a sin? It’s good triumphing over evil.

The two of them kissing on the piano bench at Tangiers was wrong, but when Kate thinks about Betty, independently of that sin – she just feels _home,_ and safe, and almost like she’s whole, even though so much of her has been ripped away in less than a year. Loving Betty just feels right, like loving Mother or her brothers. _So why can’t I just love her? I know what not to do, now. Even if I’m weak, I can’t sin with her, now that she has a boyfriend._

A blast of icy wind stings at Kate’s cheeks. Gasping at the cold, blundering through the snow and soaking the hems of her trousers – _Betty’s_ trousers - Kate wraps her arms right around herself. She’s not just trying to keep warm. She’s holding in this idea, this dizzying, terrifying idea, that she doesn’t _have_ to be a sinner. It takes every ounce of strength she has, just to keep that idea from blowing away towards someone who deserves salvation so much more. She’s always thought that being a sinner was as much a part of her as her red hair or her blue eyes.

_I should get to have something I want,_ Kate thinks slowly.  _Because it’s mine, this life. I worked for it. I can make it however I want. And if I don’t want the way I feel about Betty to be dirty, then it doesn’t have to be. Father’s gone now, and Betty’s with Ivan. It’s finally safe for the two of us, as long as we’re careful. I can be careful for the rest of my life, if it means I can stay here. With her._

When Kate steps off the street car and spots Mrs Groot’s rooming house, she finds herself breaking into a near-run. The sound of her shoes crunching on the icy steps barely slows her down. It’s only once she gets into the front hall, blinking foolishly in the comparatively bright light, that she slows down, feeling disoriented despite having once called this place home. All of a sudden, every step she takes brings more and more doubt.

_What if Betty’s angry with me?_ she wonders. _What if she’s given up on me?_ For a moment, Kate thinks of the Prodigal Son, but even that doesn’t bring much comfort. Betty thinks the Bible’s a load of bunk, she’s hardly likely to try and live by its example. What if she’s pushed it too far, and Betty’s decided she’s better off without Kate in her life?

Still, even with the increasingly likely possibility that Betty might scream and shout and throw her out on her ear, Kate keeps moving, climbing the stairs to the third floor. It’s only when she reaches the doorway to the common room that Kate stops in her tracks.

Betty’s in the common room, but she’s with Ivan. Even with all the thinking Kate’s been doing, about how good Ivan is for Betty, all the good he’s going to bring into her life, it’s still jarring to see them together. No, not jarring exactly. More like a bittersweet reminder. Kate doesn’t remember her parents ever looking the way Ivan and Betty look right now, sitting at that little table, drinking tea. They look so sweet and homey and  _right_ together. It makes Kate ache inside, to be with someone else and have it be the right thing. To not have this sneaking suspicion that perhaps she really is meant to be all alone.

_If you were a better person,_ says a part of Kate that doubts everything she does, _you’d turn around and leave right this second-_ She pushes that thought away, but its absence doesn’t reveal new reserves of courage. All she knows how to do is stand, and watch, and wait for a sign that it might be okay for her to be here.

It’s Ivan who spots Kate first. He says, “Well, look who’s here,” as though he knew all along that Kate would come back. Betty, on the other hand, looks as though Kate’s come back from the dead. The teapot, in mid-pour, rattles against the rim of Ivan’s cup as Betty nearly loses her grip on the handle. Ivan steadies it, places it safely onto the tabletop. Betty can’t seem to let him take it away from her fast enough.

Betty rises from the table and moves, little by little, toward Kate, like she’s worried Kate might vanish if she makes any sudden movements. The expression on Betty’s face … anybody else would call it guarded, but Kate knows, without ever having seen it before, that this is how Betty looks when she’s afraid to let all her walls come tumbling down but knows they’re about to anyway. That she wants them to tumble down anyway, but she needs to know it’s safe. And it is. Kate knows all about safety, the way someone who’s lived their whole life in a jail cell knows the sun the instant they feel it warming their skin. It’s different to anything she’s ever felt before, but she knows it because it’s how things are supposed to be.

“I was out there, thinking that I had no family left, but … then I realised that I did,” Kate says softly.

Betty smiles, her eyes bright with tears. For once, even with the life she lived before she was Kate Andrews, the life that has always made it so hard to believe that anyone could want her near them, Kate isn’t afraid that she’s made Betty sad. She knows that Betty is crying because she’s happy to have her back. Kate knows because she feels it too, even with everything that’s happened.

Betty doesn’t move, though. She still can’t, and so Kate steps forward and opens her arms. That’s all the encouragement Betty needs. Betty the strong, the brave, the toughest broad at Vic Mu, Kate’s protector, Kate’s hero, flings herself into Kate’s embrace. She locks her arms around Kate, laughing and crying like she can’t believe this is real. She’s never held Kate like this before. Whenever they hugged before, however spontaneous it was, Kate could always feel Betty being just a little bit _careful,_ being mindful of the wounds all over Kate’s back. Being mindful of all sorts of things. Now she hugs Kate like nothing can hurt either of them, ever again.

For the first time in a very, very long while, Kate doesn’t have any doubts or fears to push down, to push away. _This is where I belong,_ thinks Kate, and she lets herself love, and be loved.


End file.
